Terri Lynn Sauson (born August 5, 1968), known professionally as Terri Clark, is a Canadian country music artist who has had success in both Canada and the United States. Signed to Mercury Records in 1995, she released her self-titled debut that year. Both it and its two follow-ups, 1996's Just the Same and 1998's How I Feel, were certified platinum in both countries, and produced several Top Ten country hits. (wikipedia)

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[It's pledge week here at the Rex Parker site (thru Sat.) —read my pitch for donations in the opening paragraphs of Sunday's write-up, here ... and thanks for your faithful readership (and the many kind messages I've received so far)]

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This was cute, but the theme answers weren't winners. They were just OK. There was some pleasure in figuring out the theme and then trying to parse the answers, but I'm a little surprised that with such a wide-open theme (possibility-wise) there weren't zingier theme answers out there to be had. The fill is mostly ordinary—not bad, not great, not remarkable either way. Maybe a bit on the pedestrian side. It's a 78-worder with mostly short fill, so there's not a lot to be done. Best you can do is not muck the grid up too bad. Had one big hold-up—could not, for the life of me, figure out what [Hawks] was getting at, even when had all but one letter. I also put in ARE SO instead of AM TOO (playground—or sandbox—retorts being among my most hated of all clue-types), and didn't fully correct it (ended up with ARTOO, which is a correct answer for an entirely different clue). Lost about 10-15 seconds there. Otherwise, no issues. Lucked into TERRI. I'd just been (co-)constructing a puzzle, and you come across all kinds of potential fill when that happens. Had to remind myself who had the name TERRI, just so I could gauge if it was usable. I determined it was not. Wouldn't put her in a puzzle unless I had just about zero other options. And crossing EEE and GTS? Well, let's just say that that part of the grid is probably best left in our rear-view mirror.

Theme answers:

18A: Monopolist's clothing accessory? (TRUST BELT)

24A: Designers for Microsoft Windows? (ICON ARTISTS)

41A: What Martian invaders may be intent on? (ROUT OF THIS WORLD)

53A: What the backer of a failing business may do? (EAT ALL COSTS)

Constant solving came in especially handy today. Good old standbys Red ADAIR (38A: Oil well firefighter Red ___) and ENIAC (2D: Univac I predecessor) were there to lend a hand. I could've answered [Bewhiskered frolicker] in my sleep. No need even to see how many spaces are involved. Maybe KITTEN would get that clue, but how often do you see KITTEN in a puzzle. Rarely. OTTER, however, has much grid cred. He's old friends with ADAIR and ENIAC. Love the word/name PONZI (1D: Schemer called to mind by the Madoff swindle), though it took several passes for my eyes to register what the hell kind of word "Schemer" was. It was like looking at some hybrid of Schumer and schmear.

I work for a University and there is a course rubric in the Education department, SMEE: Science and Math for Elementary Education. Maybe we should introduce some new clues for this tired bit of crosswordese?

I enjoyed this puzzle! Two days in a row. The theme was not so special but what I enjoyed is that it was almost all NORMAL words -- with very little crosswordese. I'm not a fan of elaborate, fancy themes that come at a cost of weird fill around them.

So this puzzle fit the bill!

I recognized Polonius right away from Hamlet but thought he was standing behind the drapes. I didn't know the word arras. Now I do.

What about Terri Garr, Rex? I haven't seen much of her in years, but she played a central role in three blockbuster movies (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Tootsie and Mr. Mom) from the late 70s/early 80s. Surely that should make her crossworthy.

I found this puzzle a tad boring, but yesterday's was a hard act to follow.

Easier than yesterday's for me (no write overs) and not quite as zippy. Nothing really stood out although the NW started with 3 unusual downs. However, not too many clunkers and a theme that makes you look twice = how many stars @ dk?

Wow. I actually pulled up imdb to check on the spelling of her name and was sure it read "Terri.". I am IRKed all over again about my eye doc telling me that she had only bumped up my scrip to half the increase I needed a year ago because it was all my eyes could "handle.". If there happen to be any eye docs who can explain that one tome, I'd be grateful.

LORD POLONIUS: He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.Pray you, be round with him.

@acme The Rust Belt is the area in the midwest US (Indiana, Michigan, Ohio...) where industry/factories once flourished, but have since gone out of business/been abandoned (i.e., rusting). The US has other belts also - Bible Belt, Sun Belt...

I live in the Rust Belt, and the first literary work I learned by heart was Green Eggs and Ham, but my SPotty attendance led me astray.

@Arras Camp-y Minos - Since you asked, I'll complain. Both the northern and southern 3x5 sections are less than pleasant. GTS could be several random two letter combos with an "s" stuck on. EEE? TERRI Clark? ESO crossing LUEGO and ARRAS (hand up for wanting drapes, though my first thought was curtains). Yuck.

I do like TRUST BELT and ICON ARTISTS. ROUT OF THIS WORLD is too militaristic for me this morning, and EAT ALL COSTS a little too depressing. Making this feel more like a forlorn Tuesday puzzle than a sprightly Wednesday puzzle.

A thin theme, but a fun puzzle from Chris Handman, his second for the Times.

The standout theme entry was ICONARTISTS which gets a turbo shot from its opening “I” and seems to delight in twitting Gates afficionados by giving a nod to Apple’s signature successes.

I liked PROOF as clued with its math twist rather than as a 90 PROOF vodka with a lemon twist and QUICKSAND was a nice, rarely seen answer.

Then we have the haberdashery clues, though PANT was such a confused entry it only huffed and puffed with an unmeasured inseam when forced to give way to a mooner’s dropping of TROU, (which, as I recall, was sprung on us by Joon Pahk some months back).

All in good fun and a pleasant warm-up for whatever skullduggery Thursday brings to the solving party.

I liked the theme and unlike Rex I thought the answers were "winners". What answers would I have qualified as winners? Just asking.I have a problem with seeing so many pop culture answers in one puzzle though whether I know the answers or not. PONZI, ENIAC, WILCO, NILLA, ZAC just in one corner. Needed google to get me out of personal natiks in the NW and SE corners. Never heard of WILCO so had PENS in 1A.All in all typical Wednesday for me in terms of difficulty. So I rate it as medium.

The theme was original and funny. Some of the answers were a throwback. Fighting Red ADAIR was world-famous for his oil fire-fighting skills and was called on during the First Iraq war to quench a number of fires set up by a retreating Iraqi army in Kuwait. Funny you do not hear much of oil fires these days!

RUSTBELT of course conjures up the time in the early 80s or so when American manufacturing was moved offshore from the Midwest.

Is no one going to talk about the two ME's in this puzzle? ON ME and IT'S ME. I thought it was a pretty strict rule that you couldn't have the same word twice. And it threw me off because once I had one ME, I couldn't consider it for the other answer.

I know what a rust belt is, but what is a trust belt? I also did not know wilco, so my flock was in a pen. Another write-over was Nestea for Nestle. Lipton is the company name, so I didn't expect a product name.

That EEE sits like a pimple on the forehead of this puzzle. I enjoyed the solve, though.

Thought this was a debut puzzle, must have missed his previous one. It's always nice to do a puzzle on a day it's published. This came out to medium-challenging for me at 7:03. Missed all you nice folks. Hope to get the time off to get to the ACPT this year. :-)

Theme was OK but I'll have forgotten it by tomorrow.Fabric names can be real mysteries. Having toile and arras next to each other is a bit much but luckily I remembered both, only from xwords though.I grew up in the Rust Belt and for me the meaning was that they salted the roads in winter and everyone drove rusty cars.@ jae, when you figure out what meme means let me know. I still haven't grasped that.@ Jgerbs, The above-mentioned meme gives this grid four "me"s.@ Andrea, I thought of The Me Park immediately too!@ jesser, I'm with you all the way on Roy. Brilliant guitar work and highly unappreciated.

I marvel at the cleverness required to come up with original themes, and this one wasn't bad. It was a tougher-than-usual Wendesday for me: not knowing the spelling of either ZAC (20A) or WILCO (3D) created a bit of a Natick with my insertion of a 'K,' and there were some abstruse answers (TROU? WILCO? TRUST BELT?) that I still don't get. It's weird not having Wikepedia right there for a follow-up... how will we fact-checkers and trivia junkies ever get through the day?

My cranky pants must be in the wash or something, because I enjoyed this puzzle! Call me Pollyanna (if you do, you won't be the first!), but I look at (personal) naticks as an opportunity to fill gaps in knowledge: always looking to improve from my usual leaderboard standing in the mid-300s!

All NW Downs were gimmes, which revealed ICONARTISTS, which put me immediately on the wrong road to AppleLand, expecting a theme of wacky answers beginning with I. Luckily IRUSTBELT made absolutely no sense (at least in any parallel universe I know of) so I got out of the QUICKSAND just in time for the SPARETIRE reveal, and back on track for the other theme answers.

Still no idea what a MEME is (other than two more MEs; thanks, @Two Ponies!). Something else to google...

I've just gotta express some love for the ESO/LUEGO cross. Those answers dropped in nice and smooth from years of Spanish language study, and just in the nick of time, too: I needed some traction in the Texas area to get TOILE and ARRAS!

Got to 18A before I knew the theme, so I was thinking of the rich guy stereotype in the "Monopoly" board game and trying to fit in top hat of watch fob, or morning coat, or something -- finally saw it with ICON ARTISTS, and then the delightful ROUT OF THIS WORLD.

Generally, I thought there were too many cute clues; it felt like I was doing one of those Guardian or Nation puzzles. They can be fun, but they aren't the same.

Writeovers: PEnS for PEWS, SPotty for SPARSE, MIdaS (stupidly) for MINOS, and PROB I (figuring the abbreviation of MATHematics in the clue was meaningful) for PROOF, until OAST saved me (whatever an oast may be).

WILCO means "WILl COmply" - "Roger" just means "I heard you," so you have to add the WILCO if it's an order or instruction. And a MEME is like a gene for ideas.

How come none of you baseball fans is complaining about 16A, NO HIT? I guess it's literally true, since a perfect game is a no-hitter, among other things, but it's too misleading for me.

Did anybody else have an issue with OJAYS/TANYA cross? On the one hand, it's two lesser known proper nouns, both from roughly same sphere (mid-late-20th-century pop music). On the other hand, there was really only one letter it could have been, and once I had everything else, I had no trouble filling in the Y. I guess somebody else would have commented already if it were an issue, but I'm curious as to what people think.

@JbergDidn't know WILl COmply = WILCO!Now that's the exact kind of thing i love to come to the blog comments for!

Hmmmm, now that its been brought up, IT'S ME, ON ME, MEME, (and THE ME PARK) is a lot of me me me me.Maybe Chris is really Horshak!

And again, altho i think T/RUSTBELT is a dullish theme answer (tho mostly thru my ignorance of not totally knowing what RUSTBELT was, so couldn't appreciate the play on words fully...tho i love @dk's explanation....Tho now i have to look up what color/material "madras" is to fully get his joke AND i will have to contend with his not reading past "i love @dk..." to get mine! )I did love that all the add-a-letters were consistently in the front.

Tony Orbach and i made a Sunday where we added an i(ARE WE THERE YETI, OPEN WIDE AND SAY AHI) and now I'd love to see one where they all started with I...because i love ICONARTISTS.

Actually now that i think about it we did have one by a young boy that was i+ as a sort of Apple tribute... And one where the capital i = lower case l...but that was a whole 'nother thing.HASTA LUEGO!

You know what's a waste of time writing about? Ambivalence. Yet I'm about to do it. You know what's an ever bigger waste of time? Reading about ambivalence. Stop right how.

The conceit of the puzzle was a new one to me, add a letter in order from another word to get wacky phrases, so that was good. Wacky phrases not being so wacky was not so good. I liked ICONARTIST because there is, or used to be, such a thing. Back when Windows was new there was an actual staff who's job it was to design icons. I liked ROUTOFTHISWORLD because it sounds like a real thing, hence to my mind wacky. I disliked the other two because they weren't wacky, they were nonsensical.

Jesser - Sorry your experience in life made 59D such a sore point for you. Peace my friend.

As quilter1 has posted. As a young dk madrid shirts, shorts (bermuda length) and for some pants (trousers in WASP ville) were the rage. I wore the trousers with my Clark Treks accented with my horn rimmed glasses.

@dk - I had a pair of madras shorts that I wore with a white t-shirt, penny loafers and wayfarer sunglasses. And yes, there were pennies in the loafers. So chic. So long ago. I did get the girl though, so it wasn't too bad.

In 30-odd years of flying, I don't think I ever said "wilco". Telling a controller that you'll comply with instructions doesn't ensure that you understood them correctly. Pilots are required to repeat the controller's command:

ATC: Delta 123, fly heading one three five, climb to flight level three five zero.

Delta 123: Roger, Delta 123, heading one three five, climb to three three zero.

ATC: Negative, Delta 123; climb to flight level three five zero.

Delta 123: Okay, sorry, Delta one two three climb to three five zero.

"Wilco" there could have been disastrous. Probably no pilot error is more common than communication glitches and subsequent failure to do as assigned. The collision at Tenerife is a good example.

Long-time solver/reader but my first-time post to this Rexville blog, with its very interesting cast of characters. No comment on today's puzzle (still working up my nerve) but:

@foodie ........ (from last week - sorry it's so late - apologies if someone already told you)........ Do you know you can disable that really annoying Auto-Correct on the ipad? I did so months ago and much prefer doing my own proofreading.

Go to Settings, then General, then Keyboard.

Switch "Auto-Correction" to Off.

Probably also best to switch "Check Spelling" to Off as I think they work in tandem. (Any Apple gurus out there to clarify this last point?)

Maybe you already know this but, instead of slogging through the online Apple manuals, the easiest thing is usually just to Google a question: "How do I disable Auto-Correction on the ipad?"

Bleeding Madras were popular cotton shirts to provide the cool look in the 60s. Not sure I remember JFK standing dockside at Hyannisport with his shades and bleeding Madras shirts but he would have cut quite a figure.

Madras of course is a major port city in South India (my birthplace!) now known by the name Chennai (Bleeding Chennai?!). The British in their 200+ year rule of India used Madras as their de facto capital so that they were well ensconced even as they successively defeated the Mughal, French (Pondicherry in the South, Portuguese (Goa today) and Dutch colonialist. But I will leave you with this limerick:

There was a man from MadrasWhose balls were made of brassIn stormy weatherthey clashed together And sparks came out of his arse (pronounced the British way)

theoda3rd - Rex should pay Evil Doug for being here. Today, for example, he gave one of the most insightful reasons for a bad clue ever read here. Besides, if you go to his profile you will see he is retired and sponging off his wife, so he clearly is in no position to donate....

@ JFC, I don't know if you are trying to be funny but where do you get off calling someone you do not know a sponge? You seem to feel the need to engage Evil Doug in some sort of dialogue. He has taken the high road so far and ignored you but I'm tired of reading your little barbs. Doug is a long-time member here and well-liked by many.To everyone else, sorry. I would have said this directly to JFC if he had an account.

O'Jays crossing PJ's? Backstabbers in nightwear. My wife is M.J. My son is J.J. My nephew is a part-time D.J. when he isn't defending America from terrorists. I like to drink O.J. And I've got nothing to say about B.J.'s.

@JFC - Evil gave an example of cases where Roger would not be followed by WILCO. There are plenty of examples where Roger is followed by WILCO, so much so that it has become a part of the language as a pair. Others here have explicated on the derivation of WILCO. The clue was spot on.

Good ol' Two Ponies, watching my back, as usual. I think he's citing my satirical profile on Blogger where I actually call myself a 'parasite' on my working wife, since I retired after seven years of making $8k a year teaching two college courses. (And I derived such pleasure out of working with NKU freshmen in my beloved public speaking course that I would have done it for less.)

I do not know "where you do get off" attacking me when the person who was aiming a “barb” was the person to whom I was responding. While my comment was not directed to Evil Doug, it should be obvious to even the most casual reader of my comments that I am a fan. I enjoy his sense of humor and his perspective, which apparently is more than you can say about even beginning to understand my sense of humor or perspective....

@JFC- You said "Today, for example, he gave one of the most insightful reasons for a bad clue ever read here." How does one counter example to the common usage make for a bad clue? Roger WILCO has been used in ham radio for decades. The fact that pilots would repeat the instructions does not obviate that fact that Roger WILCO is used, as is, in other scenarios.

Your man crush on Evil aside, the clue was perfectly accurate, hence not bad. The clue even specified radioer, not pilot.

This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 8/1/2009 post for an explanation. In a nutshell, the higher the ratio, the higher this week's median solve time is relative to the average for the corresponding day of the week.

All solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)

I am so happy to read this. This is the type of manual that needs to be given and not the accidental misinformation that is at the other blogs. Appreciate your sharing this greatest doc.Dye 1oz Bottle Fluoro-Lite Leak Detection

Thank you, captcha gods, for at least removing the black blob. Now, though for the life of me I can't fathom why ONE word wouldn't do, I can faithfully recreate what's there. Now please, no more fixing what ain't broke! Today was easy but with a couple of near-Naticks, so yeah, easy-medium. TOILE/ARRAS/LUEGO, that spells ("M-O-O-N!") trouble for me. MEME? I know nothing. Got it on crosses, shrugged, and left it in. I was just lucky to hit on SELLS for "Hawks." Guess my brain's been "Shortzitized." I thought sure this guy was going for a panny when he hit me with ZAC and the OJAYS (hmm, new group?); the wonderful QUICKSAND furthered this idea--but alas! no X. Weird to find AMTOO and ACHOO in the same grid. One IDO is enough, thank you. Now, while we're celebrating the wonderfully funny (and gorgeously sexy!) Teri Garr,let us include her appearance on STTOS' "Assignment: Earth" as the ditzy secretary employed by Gary Seven's predecessors. She was hilarious. "It's typing...it's typing everything I'm saying! Stop it! STOP IT!" Ah, great stuff.